


Cross

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Brother Dean, Brother Feels, Episode: s11e17 Red Meat, Fever, First Aid, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Important Artifacts, Inanimate Objects, Injury, Memories, Spoilers, or Hurt/Fix?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:24:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keep it stocked. Live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross

written for this conversation, and [ash48's](http://ash48.livejournal.com/) prompt, at [](http://spn-littlebro.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_littlebro**](http://spn-littlebro.livejournal.com/), re: [the first aid kit](http://spn-littlebro.livejournal.com/32232.html#comments&quot)!

 

Hemostatic combat gauze, Dad said.

Didn’t have that then, but we have it now, and--  
  
Scissors; don’t forget, Dean; keep it stocked.  
  
Assess: breathing, bleeding, bleeding, shock.  
  
You don’t die.  
  
*****

The box has eyes, a memory.  
  
Stray stitch, Dad’s index, lost lunch. Things rattle in the trunk: silver, chain, blade, cross, that first-aid knocks against. Cross says _go, go!_ Sam stocked it with quik-clot, with fancy Telfa. Dean scowled; it saw him scowl, box-mouth yawed-to (look at all these advances; you’re still, yeah, mortal. You boys.)  
  
Things you die of on the way: gutshot, blocked air, punctured lung.  
  
Things you don’t: hell-torture, grade B; cortex-fuck; post-re-entry angelic transport trauma, possession hangover, sigil-burns, grace extraction, grade A.  
  
There’s demon here too.  
  
Bit of hemocytic just there, microscopic, bloodtype W, positive, plasma fused with fire, rubbed in the paint.  
  
*****

Sam takes a bullet.  
  
Dean flings it open skin-kneed, graceless, goes down, quick as a hinge.  
  
It’s always going to hurt. Sam’s eyes stoic as stones steeled, when he digs for—  
  
Winces, hard, levers it out.  
  
*****  
Hypovolemic shock. Once they had a cuff, and once mercury skittered on the old surfaces (Sammy, 8, fever in Muscatine, sent it straight to the end, dad around some bend. No ER. Aspirin. Ice. Grape soda. Six hours Dean rod-straight next to his green brother, army dudes triage-clump on the quilt.)  
  
Sam shook and broke; sun rolled up.  
  
Drugstore run, dad said, and went.  
  
*****  
Don’t die, Dean said.  
  
Field medicine: is them in every field, armed  
  
with extra breath and blood; combat gives  
  
him Sammy wider than sea, shotgun-sunset-ride; he swallows  
  
the broad-spectrum, rattles in lung, trunk, that cross:  
  
You keep it stocked. _You live._

**Author's Note:**

> This is interesting; under the terms of the First Geneva Convention you can't use the red cross to mark medical supplies unless you're the ICRC; exception:North America, where Johnson & Johnson uses it.


End file.
